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“Leave them all alone,” Richard said.

Gregory stood, and in leopardman form he was as tall as Richard. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to play with them, too?”

“Yes, yes, I want to play, but I’m not going to.”

“Why not?” Gregory asked.

“Because you don’t torment your friends, Gregory,” Micah said from the doorway with Richard’s newest girlfriend beside him. She was about my size with dark brunette hair cut just above her shoulders. She was wearing a pale blue skort and a white blouse with little blue flowers all over it. Sandals and carefully painted toenails completed the outfit. She was clinging to Micah’s hand and arm with both her hands. You didn’t usually hang on to someone like that unless they were your boyfriend. I realized there was an emotion I could feel through the fear—jealousy. What the hell was she doing hanging on to Micah?

She shivered in the doorway, and her eyes lost focus, as if she was hearing things no one else could hear. She whispered, “What is that?”

“Fear,” Gregory said.

“Oh,” she said in a small voice, and she pulled away from Micah and walked into the room. She stopped staring down at us, then looked away. She blushed and met Richard’s eyes, and blushed harder.

Gregory came to stand beside her, his furred form towering over her. “You want to play, too, don’t you?”

She looked down at us again, and this time her eyes weren’t human. I’d seen that particular trick a thousand times, but this time I screamed. Screamed like a tourist, and Nathaniel pressed himself against me as if he were trying to push himself out the other side. Damian just lay in my lap, like the fear had already killed him.

“Get Clair out of here,” Richard said, and his voice held that first edge of growl. “She’s too new, if you bring her beast like this, she’ll bleed people.”

I made a small sound in my throat, a helpless sound.

Micah took Clair by the arm and started leading her toward the door. She didn’t fight him, but she made him pull a little, while her animal eyes in that pretty face stared at us. She wasn’t embarrassed anymore, there was nothing human enough left in her to be embarrassed about nudity.

“What’s happening to them?” Micah asked.

“Damian’s first master is trying to kill them,” Richard said.

“How?” I wasn’t sure if he were asking how she’d kill us or how it had happened.

“Scare them to death.”

Micah almost had Clair to the door. “How can you stop it?”

Richard looked at Micah then. “I let Anita feed on me, and Jean-Claude comes riding to the rescue.” The growl had left his voice, and all that remained was tiredness and a sort of world-weariness, as if he’d seen too much, done too much, and didn’t want to do it anymore.

Micah and Richard stared at each other for a moment, then Micah gave a small nod. “Keep everybody alive,” he said, and he pulled Clair through the doorway.

She grabbed the door frame. “They smell so good.”

Micah threw her over his shoulders, and the movement startled her enough that she let go of the door and he carried her out of sight. Her words floated back, “No, I don’t want to go.”

Richard tried to get his jeans unfastened one-handed, and it wasn’t working. “I need some help here Gregory.”

The leopardman looked at him. “Going to fuck while you have the chance?”

Richard growled at him, and I made a small sound. Nathaniel whimpered. I knew in the front of my head that this was stupid. That Richard would not hurt me, not in that way, but the fear had a mind of its own. Nathaniel was a wereleopard, but he was terrified, too. No logic, just fear.

“If I shift, the pants will shred, and I don’t have extra clothes over here anymore,” Richard said.

“I thought your control was better than that, Ulfric,” Gregory growled.

Richard turned some of that anger loose and yelled, “I can taste their fear on my tongue, down my throat, as if I’ve already swallowed them.” He balled his good hand into the torn front of his T-shirt and pulled. He was suddenly standing over me naked from the waist up, with a look in his eyes that would have frightened me even